The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (33 page)

“Get showered, cooled, off, and come find me
on the back patio when you’re ready to eat,” Alondra said.

“Showered?” Gieo asked with unabashed
hope.

“Of course,” Alondra said. “This is
civilization, after all.”

Gieo barely waited for the door to close
before running for the bathroom, stripping off her clothes with
every step.

Chapter 21:
It’s all uphill from
here.

It had been
close to six years since Gieo’s last shower. Sponge baths, tub
baths, and bathing in lakes and streams were all effective enough
to get the job done, but there was something delightfully decadent
about a shower that she just didn’t appreciate until after it was
gone. She ran the water cold first to wash away the grit and sweat
of the day. Once her skin was cooled and cleaned in a way it hadn’t
been in six years, she turned the water knob for hot, finding the
simple pleasure she’d almost forgotten existed—hot water from a
shower head. For the first time in ages, she stepped from a shower
clean and refreshed. If civilization had any argument for its
existence, a shower was it.

Indoor plumbing really seemed like a fanciful
world of a past that included movies, the internet, and cable TV.
Standing in the tiny bathroom, wrapped in a towel, still dripping
wet, Gieo tested the handle on the toilet. It flushed. She nearly
burst into tears of joy right then and there. All the nervous
energy of the day combined with the things she’d long since
forgotten about missing, and she found herself on the edge of
hysterics at something as simple as a shower and flushing toilet
being in existence somewhere. Part of her, a very loud, vocal part
of her screamed that she should live in Albuquerque; she would be
infinitely more helpful to the Ravens if she could take a shower
and use an indoor bathroom. Something Alondra had said to her
snapped her from her delusional thoughts.

She burst from the bathroom and quickly got
dressed in repeatedly-patched and leather-reinforced blue jeans and
a white pleasant blouse. In bare feet, her purple hair with
increasingly long black roots still wet, she padded through the
house to the back patio. The smell of a summer barbeque greeted her
long before she could find her way onto the Spanish-style veranda.
The patio’s plank trellis held tomato plants and an entire herb
garden in hanging pottery. The sky was painted in vibrant pinks and
oranges traditional of sunsets in the desert. To the east, down the
hill, a handful of men in waders were standing in the river, fly
fishing to add their bait to the whirring insects brought out by
the coolness of dusk. Alondra stood at the edge of the lowest tier
of the tile patio. Smoke from the massive black grill scented the
air with cooking meat, vegetables, and hickory. Gieo’s focus melted
into the beauty of the scene and the familiar smell from suburbia
of a backyard barbeque. She nearly broke into tears again.

Alondra came walking up toward the house with
a tray of grilled food, steaming even in the warmth of the New
Mexico evening. She pointed with her grill tongs to a mosaic-top
metal patio set. Gieo made her way down to the circular table
surrounded by four chairs and took her seat at one of two place
settings. Alondra set down the tray, resting the tongs across the
barbequed chicken breasts, tomatoes, and corn on the cob. She took
her seat across from Gieo and smiled with those brilliant, white
teeth.

There was so much about Alondra that spoke of
an eternal youth. Her body easily could have belonged to a
nineteen-year-old athlete, as could her skin, but her eyes, hands,
and voice spoke of an age and experience well beyond a possible
number. Gieo found herself far more in awe of Alondra than
attracted to her, although her undeniable substance and wisdom were
beautiful but imposing qualities.

“You have indoor plumbing,” Gieo said,
unfurling one of the cloth napkins to drape it over her lap.

“Most Raven cities do,” Alondra said. “The
basic components of our oldest technologies survived the cataclysm
and people who knew how to put them together and make them work
aren’t difficult to find if you exchange protection and food for
their expertise. Las Vegas’s very existence is owed to human
arrogance and technological triumphs. This is even truer now as the
Raven capitol.”

“Then why doesn’t Veronica bring these things
to Tombstone?” Gieo asked. Even at her workshop her water had been
drawn from the earth by a hand-pumped well; her bathroom had been a
spade and an old camping toilet as she didn’t really know how to
create an outhouse. The fact that Tombstone could easily be another
Albuquerque but wasn’t really irritated her.

“Veronica is a colonizer,” Alondra said with
a little chuckle. “Her mentality is conquest and control. According
to her, hot showers, flushing toilets, and a reliable electrical
grid only serve to make people soft. To be honest, she would be far
better served in the Red set, but Carolyn isn’t about to relent her
position as queen, and so Veronica took over the Whites.”

“Why aren’t you the White Queen?” Gieo asked.
“You’re clearly better suited to creating civilization than she
is.”

“I appreciate the compliment,” Alondra said,
“but creature comforts and stability are only part of the job.
Albuquerque was quite literally dying for aid when I arrived with
my soldiers. Being raided by McKenzie and the Mexicans for several
years will make any protection look appealing. Not all surviving
cities are so eager to rejoin a centralized government. Veronica is
a master at knowing what each city needs and how to accomplish it.
I’m more of a city planner for a populace that will readily welcome
me.”

“If Tombstone knew what you did here, they’d
fall all over themselves to welcome you,” Gieo said with a smirk.
She scooped food onto her plate, offering to do the same for
Alondra who nodded her acceptance of being served. “Why didn’t you
read my letter of introduction?”

“I’d rather get to know you in a more natural
way,” Alondra said. “The bike you rode in on is a marvel, and one I
assume you built yourself or you wouldn’t have driven it across the
desert alone. Tell me, why have I never heard of you?” Alondra
leaned forward on the table, tenting her fingers under her chin and
looking at Gieo as though she were the only woman in the world.

“I’m kind of new to the Ravens,” Gieo said.
“Before that, I was alone in a workshop and fortress of my own
creation. I’m just now realizing exactly how big the world still
is.”

“What made you rejoin society?”

“Someone special picked me up after my last
airship was shot down.” Gieo had wanted a more grandiose motivation
to share, but the simple fact was she’d wanted Fiona.

“What’s his name?” Alondra asked, an
intrigued sparkle rising in her onyx eyes.

“
Her
name is Fiona,” Gieo said.

The little sparkle rose into a genuine flash
of an epiphany. “Her last name wouldn’t happen to be Bishop, would
it?”

Gieo nodded.

“That explains a lot,” Alondra said. “There
are two lesbian Queens in the Ravens. One is Carolyn and the other
is Veronica; Fiona was a swirling, destructive force in Las Vegas
who came close to spoiling our unified front by pitting Carolyn and
Veronica against each other for her affections.” Alondra took a
bite of chicken, chewing it thoroughly before continuing. “Maybe
you can explain to me what is so spectacular about her, because you
gay girls can’t seem to keep your hands off that daffy
redhead.”

As angry as Alondra’s glib description of
Fiona made Gieo, she had to admit it was probably one of the kinder
she’d heard. She had an inkling to Fiona’s turbulent past with the
Ravens, but had never really been in a position to hear more of it
from someone who wasn’t directly involved.

“What exactly happened between Veronica and
Fiona?” Gieo asked, trying desperately to keep her voice even and
calm.

“I think it’d be best if you directed that
question to any of the three involved,” Alondra said. “Suffice it
to say, you’ve walked directly into the middle of a complex love
triangle half a decade old. I will tell you this: you’re not the
first girl to get pulled into the tangled mess between them.”

They finished dinner with a scant discussion
of things to come, their plans for the future, and a promise for
Gieo to return through Albuquerque on her way home. The topic of
Fiona and Veronica didn’t arise again as Gieo couldn’t imagine
Alondra would speak more on a topic she’d already put to bed.

Gieo slept fitfully despite the relative
opulence of the guest room. Her mind wouldn’t let go of the new
enigma of Fiona and Veronica’s relationship including a tangled
mess and another woman whose name Gieo had heard, but of whom she
knew little else—Carolyn. She didn’t trust Veronica and she was
beginning to wonder if her trust for Fiona might be misplaced.
Exhaustion pushed back against her whirring mind, knocking the
complex thoughts aside long enough to put her into a deep sleep
where she found harsh nightmares of the man she killed. His face
kept coming back to her, the bubbling frothy blood of his sucking
chest wound boiling out of the bullet hole in endless streams while
his conversation with himself continued unabated. She felt the
unwarranted weight of something left undone crushing her chest and
only realized before waking that she’d wanted to know the man’s
name for a reason she could neither describe nor understand.

She awoke feeling sick and harried as though
her sleep was spent running. To add to this strange sensation, her
body rebelled against the exercise and long ride of the day before.
Muscles and joints that had never ached before were making up for
lost time. Getting out of the comfortable bed was difficult and
getting dressed a painful proposition. She found she’d slept far
later than she’d intended. Midmorning had come and gone with the
heat of the day already pushing toward its apex. Gieo packed, found
something to eat, and left Alondra’s home.

On the quick walk back to her bike, she grew
accustomed to the pain in her joints and muscles. Word had
apparently spread about her rank within the Ravens as the soldiers
she passed saluted her crisply. She saluted in response, taking a
shine to the novelty of it all. Back at her bike, she found a water
spigot on a nearby building, and wonder of wonders, it functioned.
She filled the brass water tanks on her bike and set off. The
guards at the gate waved her through without fanfare.

The road north was an easier ride than
anything thus far. The temperature dropped as the elevation rose
toward the mountains, allowing the bike to run cooler once Gieo
adjusted the manual choke to accommodate the rarified air. The ride
up into Colorado ran smoothly with Interstate 25 passing over most
of the ruins of small towns without fully dipping into any of them.
As Gieo suspected, when she got closer to Fort Carson and Colorado
Springs, the landscape changed. War clearly had taken its toll on
the infrastructure, but to Gieo’s surprise, there were handmade
signs along alternate routes guiding her to the northwest and
Woodland Park. The damage Albuquerque suffered paled in comparison
to the obliteration the Air Force Academy and Fort Carson undertook
during the war. The landscape went alien, glassed, with nature’s
recovery slowed by the toxic weapons the Slark used. Gieo followed
the signs, often having to drive over the glazed ground blown clean
from the heat of explosions.

Towering trees, sylvan wilderness, and the
natural splendor she’d hoped Colorado would hold began to take over
as she pulled onto the winding road up toward what the signs called
“Space Mountain.” Cars along the sides of the roads were pulled off
by a wrecker and stripped of valuables. The signs of life were not
necessarily good signs as Gieo saw it; Alondra’s warnings about
barbarians, separatists, and marauders hadn’t fallen on deaf ears
and Gieo couldn’t even be certain what the Colorado hunting party
had truly wanted with her. Options being what they were though, she
had to try.

The signs guided her in straight and true,
and soon she found herself pulling up to a five-star resort hunting
lodge. Log cabin bungalows and a beautiful three-story A-frame main
lodge with windows running from top to bottom rose almost perfectly
from the great lodge pole pines and Douglas fir trees. The hunting
party, many of which she vaguely recognized, were about their
business, working on general maintenance or domestic duties.
Surprisingly, a handful of women and a few children were even mixed
into the group. Gieo slowed her bike, coming to a stop well out of
the edge of the roundabout driveway for the main lodge, and pulled
off her helmet and scarf. A few of the burly, bearded mountain men
came strolling down the way. The lead man, who wore his sandy blond
hair and beard long but kempt, waved to her.

“As I live and breathe,” the man said, “if it
isn’t the tech expert of Tombstone.”

Gieo waved back and slowly lowered the pod on
her bike to hold it in place. They seemed friendly enough and the
presence of women and children gave the entire lodge a look of
domesticity as though it were a sociable camping trip and not an
attempt to rebuild society after an alien invasion. As the men got
closer, Gieo slipped from the saddle, stretched her back and tried
to force a smile, although she was tired, sore, and not in a
particularly good mood.